Rare Earth Doped Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glasses For Monolithic Integration Of Lasers And Volume Bragg Gratings

In present paper we report a study and demonstration of rare earth doped photo-thermo-refractive glasses for monolithic integration of laser sources/amplifiers and volume Bragg gratings. Namely, we demonstrated laser action of neodymium and ytterbium-erbium doped photo-thermo-refractive glasses. In addition, we studied the influence of the rare earth dopants on the photosensitivity of photo-thermo-refractive glass. It was shown that introduction of rare earth dopants not only increase the viscosity of the glass that leading to the longer heat treatment time, but also decrease the ability of fluorine to form sodium fluorine nanocrystals in the glass host. In accordance with this data we developed and demonstrated a new glass composition which overcomes these drawbacks and can act as both holographic and laser active medium. Thus new rare earth doped photo-thermo-refractive glass can be very attractive and promising medium for monolithic integration of lasers/amplifiers and volume Bragg gratings on the united laser-holographic substrate.